An Anglican priest, the Reverend Wally Behan, who normally lives in Christchurch but is caretaking a Sydney church for six months, said he had been shocked by television footage from inside the cathedral.

''The whole place is like a bomb hit it but when you look up to the steeple now, you see the sky, and all that's come down.

''[Before the quake] you'd look across the skyline of Christchurch and there'd always be the cathedral, always the steeple of the cathedral sticking up wherever you'd look. Now, that's gone.''